1. Playing Together
Forward Thinking Approaches to Promoting Sustainable and Impactful Early Learning
Dr. Chris Swanson
Senior Director for Quality Care & Education
Johns Hopkins University, Center for Technology in Education

2. Power of Play

3. Politics at Play

4. Maybe Our Leaders Need to Learn to Play With Others…

6. Discuss 4 Big Ideas for the Future of Early Learning
How We’ll Play Today…
Discuss 4 Big Ideas for the Future of Early Learning
Examine Our Role as Leaders & Advocates
Solve the World’s Problems

7. Big Idea #1
“One” Early Childhood System

9. Current Landscape Across the Nation
4 Part C Services Housed in Dept. of Ed.
31 Preschool 619 Services Housed in Office of Special Education
QRIS – 7 non-profits; 2 R&Rs; 7 Departments of Education; 1 University; 3 co-managed; 24 HHS/equivalent
Age
# of Children (millions)
% Receiving EI/619/SE
Birth - 3
11.9
2.9%
Preschool
7.9
9.5%
Kindergarten
4.1 4%
Data Sources: 
2015 Population Division, U.S. Census Bureau.
ECTA Center:
IDEA Child Find
Childhealthdata.org
QRIS Compendium – Program Mangaement Report

10. Resources
CCDF
$8.4 billion
IDEA
$3.5 billion

11. Building a Cross-Agency Team
Step 1 Make Friends
Step 2 Know Your Data
Step 3 Make a Plan
Step 4 Roles & Responsibilities
Step 5 Is it working?

12. Leverage Our Initiatives

13. Big Idea #2
Why EC?

14. What are the Goals of Early Learning?

15. Is it to produce ‘school ready’ students?

16. Do our current ways of measuring ‘readiness’ lead to what we want?

17. Is he wondering… what really defines being ready for school?

18. Is school ready getting us ready for life?

19. Learning is not a single moment in time, but an amassed collection of experiences.
Portfolio-based approaches
Family-Provider shared goal setting; shared responsibility
School-community care connections
Trajectory of development of learning
Foundations for learning

20. Big Idea #3
Quality Matters

21. The Conundrum of Quality
“Quality Benefits Don’t Fade”
- Duke University, 2016
“Most parents and experts don’t agree on the quality of a program.”
-Harvard University, 2016
"Impact of North Carolina’s Early Childhood Programs and Policies on Educational Outcomes In Elementary School,” Kenneth A. Dodge, Yu Bai, Helen F. Ladd, Clara G. Muschkin. Child Development, November DOI: /cdev  
“Poll shows gap between parent views and expert assessments of the quality of U.S. child care,” NPR/Robert Wood Johnson Foundation/Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health Poll, October  

22. What Defines High-Quality?

23. Common Quality Standards

24. Access Matters…
10% of enrolled students expelled from Public Prek
39% found to be expelled from Private Care
Children who are expelled more than two times before Kindergarten are 10 x more likely to:
Drop-out
Have Significant Health Concerns
Be incarcerated
48% of African-American Males are Suspended More Than Once By Kindergarten

25. Less than 10% of all children have access to “high-quality child care”

26. Cross-Sector Solutions
Sustainability
Data
Partners
Commitment
Care

27. Engage Families
To understand Quality Matters

28. Big Idea #4
Transform the Workforce

29. Fast Facts
$9,410 – average cost of childcare per year
-(New America, 2016)
Exceeds average in-state college tuition in 33 states -(New America, 2016)
23.9 million US children birth to age 5 – (U.S. Census & Childstats.gov, 2016)

30. Fast Facts 59% of Centers are funded independentl y – (ACF/OPRE, 2013)
$22K – average annual salary of EC workforce – (Child Care Aware, 2016)
~2.4 million in EC workforce– (Bureau of Labor & Statistics, 2015)

31. What if Degrees are Not the Answer?

32. Competency-Based Models

33. Make this Happen Integrate your systems –trainers, college, agencies
Identify the carrots – CEUS/Clock Hours
Connect practitioner competency to compensation

34. “Play is the exultation of the possible.”
~ Martin Buber

35. Shared Services
Thank You!